Former Monzo employee scoops £750,000 in seed funding

Kieran McHugh left Monzo at the end of July to focus on the time management app full-time.

Former Monzo employee Kieran McHugh has closed a £750,000 seed round for his time management app, Daybridge, first reported by TechCrunch. 

The round was led by early Monzo investor Passion Capital, with former Monzo board member and Passion Capital partner Eileen Burbidge taking a seat on Daybridge’s board. 

Other investors in the round include several Monzo alumni, including former head of product Jordan Fish, early Monzo employee and founder and CTO of Fronted, Simon Vans-Colina, staff engineer Stephen Whitworth and director of marketing and growth Russell Smith. 

Daybridge, which started as a side project for McHugh, had over 10,000 people sign up to its waiting list in the first few days of the app’s beta being announced. 

McHugh, who worked at Monzo for over two and a half years, told AltFi: “Eileen Burbidge was actually the first person I pitched to. I had a couple of offers from other investors, but Passion Capital stood out to me.” 

“The team was really decisive and empathetic towards me and understood my vision straight away. In addition to supporting my company, they were very focussed on supporting me as well.” 

For the past six months, McHugh had been working on Daybridge as well as leading Monzo’s open banking team, before leaving his position to focus on his endeavour full-time at the end of July. 

McHugh told AltFi: “Working at Monzo definitely gave me the skills and experience I needed to start my own company. It gave me an incredible education on how to build a company well.” 

The Daybridge founder admits working on his side project as well as working at Monzo was tough: “I’d rather just have one full-time job!”  

“I’m looking to do something as impactful as Monzo and the time management space has seen no recent innovation and the technology hasn't really changed since 2007,” Mchugh told AltFi. 

The calendar app is still yet to launch but the recent seed funding will allow McHugh to focus on growth as well as bring other employees on board too.